Before reading a single word about how great your business is and why people need your products or services, the visual display of your website instantly conveys a message to site visitors. If they like what they see and click on links, your navigation system will either take them to great places that lead to sales or dead ends.
Plan Ahead
Any time you do a site redesign expect to spend a days, weeks or even months getting things perfectly into place. A day project site redesign can be as simple as changing font colors, link properties, and images. But if you are planning a totally new look think ahead: will the new look still work in two years? Five years?
If you answered, yes, you are not thinking ahead.
All websites need updates from time to time to stay fresh, competitive, and to take advantage of new software applications as they become available. Times change, business owners changes, corporate colors and even the products and services of businesses change.
Your website will someday need to change, too.
Website Redesign Makeover Step 1
Ask people you know what they think about your current website. Assure them this is not a "does this dress make me look fat question" but a real solicitation for user opinions.Good questions to ask include:
- What is the very first impression you get when you visit my website? Homegrown, cheesy, small potatoes, cold corporate, too whimsical, canned, or just perfect, etc.
- Is it too busy? Is too much information (including content, images, and hyperlink clicks) being thrown at you on pages?
- How hard or easy is it to find information on my website?
- What did you expect to find but did not (categories, features, articles, etc.)?
- Did you find typos or dead links?
Do not argue with your critics. Listen. You might be darn proud of your website but if ti does make visitors want to say and purchase, pride will leave you with an empty bank account.
Website Redesign Makeover Step 2
Using at least two different search engines, Google keywords you think (or want to) drive visitors to your website. Visit the websites of all the top ten results for competitors that come up in your keyword searches. These are the sites people will likely be comparing your website to. (If your site is not in the top ten you may also need to give your site a search engine optimization (SEO) makeover as well.)
Visit website template sites. Look through free and for-sale templates to get fresh ideas. Take notes about colors, fonts, layouts, and anything else that appeals to you. You may be able to incorporate some of these things into your own website.
- Free Templates Are a Great Way to Save Time, Money, and Learn New Web Design Skills
- What You Need to Know Before You Join a Template Membership Site
Website Redesign Makeover Step 3
If you run a blog on Wordpress, use Joomla or Drupal, or have a CSS-drive HTML website you are in luck. You can probably use a free or low cost template and swap out the old look for a new one in less than five minutes. Templates can be easily customized to further define a new look for your website.If you are not currently using any template, and your site is a mess of HTML code built on a drag-and-drop or WYSIWYG site builder tool, now is a great time to consider a long-range website plan.
Planning a redesign that will be easy to update and modify in years to come will save you thousands of dollars in the long run. Consider a design that uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). These style sheets contain directions in an outline form that instruct your web, blog, or eCommerce pages how to display.
CSS sites are versatile because you can change one line of code in one file and it will instantly affect the look of the entire site. You can change headers, footers, columns, fonts, colors, and other key visual features in a matter of minutes.
